Cereal Box Aquarium

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There’s something fun about turning a piece of cardboard headed for the recycling bin into something else! Do you remember ever doing shoe box crafts as a kid? I remember making a shoe box manger and it was one of my favorite activities in school. This is a similar idea (you could do a shoe box aquarium too!) but this is using a cereal box! This cereal box aquarium is so much fun to make and such a fun craft to keep afterwards too.

This cereal box aquarium craft is a great one for encouraging creativity! Kids can choose how they want to decorate their aquarium, what colored fish and what colors even! There are so many options and ways to build an aquarium. We would love to see how you make yours!

Directions to make the Cereal Box Aquarium

1. First you need to trace a cut out on your box. We first used a sharpie to make our lines and then using an x-acto knife (adults only do this this part) cut out the center of your box.

2. Now paint the inside of your box a turquoise blue color. Paint the outside of your box silver (to look like an aquarium).

3. Now you can decorate your aquarium however you like! Here are the elements we added:

Stones to the bottom of the aquarium – this helped to add some weight for the aquarium to stand up on its own so we do recommend this part. Stones will need to be hot glued down so adults should do this part.

Kinetic sand as a background on bottom. We didn’t try regular sand but regular sand would likely work too. The kinetic sand sticks together and holds in place so it’s easy to work with. You could also use cereal like cheerios or a puff style cereal to make it look like sand.

Green Pipe Cleaners – cut some strips of green pipe cleaners and glue to the bottom of your box to make it look like seaweed.

Sea Shells – we used the sea shells to hide the bottom of the pipe cleaners. Add some sea shells wherever you think will fit! These will also need to be hot glued gunned to stay put so make sure parents or adults do this for the kids.

And here is what it looks like so far!

Now it’s time to add your fish!

4. Print off this fish template to make these adorable fish for your cereal box aquarium.

5. Now cut out your fish template and use it to trace your fish shapes onto your colored paper. We used orange, yellow and red bright colors so they would pop in the aquarium.

6. Glue on googly eyes to your fish.

7. Take a small piece of string. Tape it to the back of your fish.

8. Now attach to the top of your cereal box.

That’s your final step! Now you have a finished cereal box aquarium. We hope you had as much fun making these as we did!

Looking for more fun crafts? Check out some of our favorites and most popular crafts below!

Looking for another fun fish craft? Make this adorable Fish Handprint Card. This would be perfect for Father’s Day or the fishing lover Dad’s birthday!